Month: March 2017

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Reduced price for our villa

Yes, it is Spring, the thrush was singing in the garden and woke me at 5am! It was lovely to hear though. Thinlking about it, Sunday morning it will be 6am so not so bad.

Mal decided he wanted a hair cut. May have been something David said about it! So we went to Broadstairs. We had a long walk along Stone Bay beach with Ellie first, she loved being back down there. We were paddling with her in the sea and I soaked my jeans. The sea was a bit rough and there certainly was a strong wind.

We spent a long time watching seagulls high up on the cliffs, waiting for mum to bring home their food.

In the evening we met up with Mal’s youngest, Dom, and his fiance Gemma and went for a Thai meal at Yama’s in Margate. It’s a restaurant we haven’t been to for a long time but the food is all freshly cooked authentic Thai, cooked by Noi. There Tom Yum soup we had to start made Mal and I cry (!) and mine was supposedly “mild”.  We had a really good evening. They are getting married in June so are busy planning a very “hippy” wedding.

Thought for the Day – “Be happy and a reason will come along.” ~ Robert Brault

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Torin set off for work early even though I believe Parliament Square and maybe other areas are still closed off.

I think Ellie has had so much fun. They just play all the time.

We took them for another long walk over the common and of course they swam in the river again! They were very well behaved and stayed away from the swans and heron.

At around lunchtime we drove back to Kent. Piles of post to go through and some belated birthday presents for Mal. I have to say suddenly here it is Spring. I really noticed the difference in the garden with all the flowers out and leaves on the trees. It looked lovely.

Thought for the Day – “The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all.” (On an underground sign this morning at Tower Hill tube station).

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We went to Ercan for our 8.20 flight and I have to say Atlas Jet are far better than Pegasus. The air hostesses are on the go all the time unlike Pegasus who bring round the things you can buy and then you don’t see them the rest of the flight. Of course the meals are included with Atlas and the tickets have proved to be a lot cheaper.  You do change planes at Ataturk in Istanbul and security there for planes coming to the UK has really been stepped up. It sounds as though as from Saturday no laptops will be allowed in hand luggage. We put ours in our cases but take note, if they are in cases they are not insured.

For people who say they won’t go near Turkey we always say that London can be as risky!! Sadly this has been proved today. We drove to Torin’s house and heard the news about what happened at the Houses of Parliament. The policeman shot and people mown down by the car. I know Torin works in central London but we weren’t sure where he was but thankfully he sent a message saying he was in a lockdown building and he was OK.  A bit too close for comfort this time.

Ellie was so pleased to see us.  Mal and I took all three dogs for a long walk on the common. All three of them ended up in the river!

Torin was home late and then we went out for a meal.

Mal snored most of the night which meant I had very little sleep and when eventually I did go to sleep, I then didn’t wake up until 8. That was more than a little inconvenient as we had a new Estate Agent coming at 9! Luckily we cleaned a bit yesterday. They arrived on time. This one didn’t bullshit us which was refreshing. We have decided to go with them, reduce the price and drop all the others who have done very little. So Anthony will have sole agency.

Next to Acmenya (rental company) about the tyre which we have discovered has a nail in it!  They don’t cover windows and tyres. This wouldn’t have been such a problem had they not closed off the entire road down to the main road!  We ended up going the long way round to the tyre place. It is so easy in this country, as we discovered many times when we lived here full time. They told us it would be “on tl” (ten). They take the wheel off, take the nail out, seal the hole, put it in water to make sure it is fixed, back on the car! Then the second man who obviously by then saw I was in a rental car, so supposedly a tourist, asked for 20tl. No, the other man told us “on”. OK he said and took the 10tl!! An absolute bargain anyway at £2.23. In the UK I feel that may have been a new tyre, oh no 2 new tyres because obviously they have to balance!!

Then we had to go and put credit on our electricity bill for when we are not here.  We have already had one trip to Girne when all their computers were down, so we tried again. This time we were successful. But first we had to battle an extremely long crocodile of school kids to get to Kibtek!

We arranged to meet Robin and Yasmin (Robin’s now wife) at Sardunya Bay. We hadn’t been there for a long time as in the past the food wasn’t good. This time I had a really nice salad.

We fly back to the UK in the morning and now there is a panic with restrictions on laptops in hand luggage. We were trying to find out  Turkish restrictions as we have to change planes in Turkey and go through another security. We have discovered even our kindles are too big! They say we have 96 hours before this is enforced BUT often the rules are changed from whatever we have read.

Thought for the Day – “Always be a little kinder than necessary.” ~ James M Barrie

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We went down to see Anthony at Azant to collect our original insurance certificate. He had emailed us a copy. We had a long chat with him about selling the house and he said prices are on the rise. He wants to pop up and look at it tomorrow. Well, the other agents haven’t done much. Easter is coming up too and that is when the interest starts again. We were in there much longer than anticipated.

The rest of the day was doing the gardening.

In the evening we went to Veni Vici. We didn’t really think about what time we were going but as we arrived about 6.30 they still had the Earlybird Menu, so we chose from that. That is between 5-7pm. The food was really delicious.

We had to go to the garage on the way home as we noticed out back tyre was flat! We pumped it up and hoped it lasted until the morning.

Thought for the Day – “If life was easy where would all the adventures be?”

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The sun was out again and we were up surprisingly early considering the amount of alcohol consumed! We have decided David and Kenny are a really bad influence on us! They reminded us of the first time we ever met, many, many years ago at Res and Steve’s house and evdiently I disappeared and was later found in the toilet, feeling not very well! I’m not quite sure how we walked back down the hill back home.

Another occasion at Res’s it was Mal and I do remember him falling over trying to get up on our land (before the drive was dug out) and him just sitting in the middle of the road laughing.  I think we discovered his sandals the next day! We do have a treasure trove full of wonderful memories and friends during our years here. It’s sad that so many have died and many others returned to the UK.We always say we had our retirement here, so whatever happens now we have had a lot of years enjoyment. This is because my dad died 6 weeks after retiring and we decided that wasn’t going to happen to us!

Now that’s better, some sun!

Gardening first then as arranged we collected David and Kenny and we went to Açmenya for our Sunday lunch. I think David had a bit of a sore head from last night!

This is our house as seen from David and Kenny’s

As always we had a lovely Sunday lunch. Today I chose the soup to start, it was chicken noodle and lemon and was so good. I also had a brandy sour as they know how to make them down there.

You wouldn’t think the four of us would have much to talk about after spending 8 hours talking yesterday but yes we did.

Later we watched the Spurs game.

Thought for the Day – “Being happy doesn’t mean everything is perfect. It means you have decided to look beyond the imperfections.” ~ Gerard Way

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The sun was out but it wasn’t exactly warm. I went to Lemar to buy the paper and then we carried on with the gardening.

David and Kenny invited us over for lunch. Jennifer and David were supposed to be going as well but they were both suffering from really bad chest infections and so couldn’t make it.  It was Mal’s third birthday celebration and they did him proud even down to the cake.

We went over there and had a delicious meal for lunch and several bottles of wine and ended up coming back home at 9.00pm! As they say (Scots) we do “blether” when we get together.